


The World Can Always Use More Smiles

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-07
Updated: 2008-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never picked up hitchhikers. Especially not dead ones with fake rubber noses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Can Always Use More Smiles

"So," Dean said. He cleared his throat and glanced in the rear view mirror. "You from somewhere around here?"

"Don't talk to it," Sam hissed.

Dean rolled his eyes. "How the fuck are we supposed to figure out how to get rid of it without talking to it?"

Sam shifted in his seat but determinedly did not turn around. "We should shoot it."

"Tried that already, desperado."

"We should shoot it again," Sam said. He did look over his shoulder then, just a quick glance, but he turned to face forwards again so quickly he almost gave himself whiplash. "With a rocket launcher, maybe," he added after a moment. "You have one of those, right?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah," he said. "But I'm not sure it'll do any good, and it'd be hell on the upholstery."

Sam was pretty sure Dean was making fun of him. "You're making fun of me," he said. "You think this is funny?"

"No," Dean said quickly. He was not successful at hiding his smirk. "Not at all."

"I do," the clown said. "I think it's fucking hilarious."

They both turned and gaped; the car swerved, spitting up gravel on the shoulder.

The clown said, "Eyes on the road, buckaroo."

"Hey," Dean said. "No backseat driving." But he kept his eyes forward after that, and a few minutes later he whispered hoarsely, "I didn't know it could talk."

Sam nodded stiffly.

"Did you know it could talk?" Dean demanded.

Sam shook his head. He could feel the clown staring at him from the back seat. "Your fault," he said quietly, giving Dean a very pointed look. "You were the one talking to it."

"I didn't think it would answer!"

"I _can_ hear you," the clown said. "What is this shit you have on the radio, anyway? Don't you have any Duke Ellington?"

The radio station faded away to static, then came back loud and clear. "Mood Indigo." It figured.

_

"Rusty Thelonius Xavier Preston the Fifth," the clown said proudly. "The first four were lawyers. I didn't go into the family business."

"You don't say," Dean said.

Rusty Thelonius Xavier Preston the Fifth had curly red hair, a fat red rubber nose, pasty white skin and a wide, comical frown painted in red over his mouth. He was wearing a jumpsuit covered in polka dots in rainbow colors and – Sam pretended to stretch so he could lean over the seat for a look – size fourteen purple shoes. He had a fake plastic flower pinned over his heart, and Sam was willing to bet any amount of Dean's illegally-won cash that if Rusty asked him to sniff it, he would end up with a nose full of water.

Rusty was also mostly transparent. He floated more or less freely above the backseat of the Impala, sliding back and forth on the curves, occasionally forgetting himself and sinking into the vinyl up to his chest. He had appeared in the car somewhere along I-80 in Iowa, and nothing they tried would get rid of him.

He didn't take too kindly to their efforts to expel him.

"The way I see it," Rusty said, "the world doesn't need any more lawyers, but the world can always use more smiles."

"But you're a _clown_," Sam said. He twisted around in his seat to glare at Rusty. "You don't make people smile. You make little kids _cry_. You're not even smiling yourself." Rusty opened his mouth to answer, but Sam went on loudly, "Oh, and also? _You're dead._ The only thing less happy-making than a clown is a _dead clown_."

Rusty blinked at him. "I'm sensing the presence of unresolved clown issues in your subconscious."

Dean snorted, tried to cover it up with a fake cough.

"I've met real killer clowns before," Sam said defensively. "Every culture in the world has myths and superstitions about killer clowns."

Rusty nodded sadly. "I know. It's hell on the reputation, you know? But I've known a few myself. Like Bumpy the Bleeder – you guys ever hear about him? Must've been sixty, seventy years ago. He made homemade sausage, the kind you didn't exactly want to sample, if you know what I mean."

Dean made a face. "Um. No. Never heard of him."

Rusty looked disappointed. "How about Tootsie the Tooth? Man, he was a character. I never did figure out why we called him 'the Tooth' rather than 'the Teeth,' even after we found out why he rattled when he walked."

"What about you?" Sam asked. "What did they call you?"

Rusty's eyes were wide and blue and unblinking. "They called me Rusty," he said. "That's my name." He held Sam's gaze for a long moment. "Hey, did you ever hear about Dinky the Dabbler? I think he finally tripped up out in Sausalito. Literally tripped up, I mean. Cops were chasing him and he fell flat on his face. He never did learn how to run in big shoes."

_

"You know what your problem is?" Rusty asked.

They had just crossed the border into Nebraska. Sam stared through the window at the fields passing by and wondered what the hell they were going to do. They didn't exactly have a protocol for dealing with a ghostly hitchhiker who hopped into the car and refused to leave.

"There's a dead clown haunting my car?" Dean offered.

Dean probably wouldn't agree to salting and burning the car, Sam thought. He would make things difficult.

"That," Rusty said. "That's your problem. You, my friend, suffer from a very curious single-mindedness. I'm not haunting your car."

"You're a ghost," Dean said. "You're in my car. _Ergo_ -"

"_Ergo?_" Sam repeated incredulously. "Do you even know what that means?"

Dean ignored him and spoke to Rusty in the mirror. "_Ergo_, you're haunting my car."

"No," Rusty said. "Don't be offended, but you're not important enough to haunt. You're only a convenient means of getting from one place to another. I'm haunting – if you'll excuse a fanciful turn of phrase – the highways and byways of this fine country."

Dean snorted. "What, all of them? Yeah, right."

"Oh, so now you're an expert in being dead?" Rusty asked.

"Well," Dean said, "since you mention it –"

"It's not impossible," Sam said. He thought about Molly and her lonely stretch of Highway 15, the way she moved from the road to the woods to the car to her old house because she believed that's what her husband needed, because when she finally got the chance leaving was more important than the place itself.

Dean looked at him sharply. "You're on the clown's side now?"

Sam only shrugged.

"What about you?" Rusty was still looking at Dean, his blue eyes like blowtorch flames in his translucent face. "What are you going to haunt when your number comes up? Childhood home? The place where you had your first kiss, met your first love? Or are you going to be stuck in the place where you die, like you don't have any choice?" Rusty tilted his head thoughtfully. "You better hope you don't kick the bucket in a gas station men's room, like Bubbles the Biter did. That's not an eternity I'd wish on anyone, and you don't seem like the type to go for that."

"I can't believe I'm being psychoanalyzed by a clown," Dean said.

"The car," Sam said. "That's my guess."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Make that _two_ clowns."

"Highway and byways," Rusty said. "Hey, buddy, pay attention. Here's our exit. Turn right at the end of the ramp."

_

Rusty told Dean to pull over beside an empty field. The nearest house was about a mile away, and there was nothing on the horizon except a single tree in the distance, a silhouette against the cloudless summer sky.

"This is my stop," Rusty said. The music on the radio faded into static, and Rusty vanished from the backseat.

Sam looked around quickly and found him again: he was standing several feet away from the car by the side of the rutted, dusty road. He glanced at Dean, who shrugged and didn't make any move to get out. Sam pushed the car door open and stepped outside. The air was hot and dry, whispering through the grass in a steady breeze.

"What is this place?" Sam asked.

Rusty was standing with his back to the road. He was more solid somehow, his purple shoes planted on the ground, his polka-dotted shoulders hunched tiredly.

"It's Disneyland," Rusty said. "Can't you see the fucking mouse over there, playing with the kiddies?"

"Is there something important here?" Sam asked. "What's out here?"

"Nothing, kid," Rusty said. "Thanks for the ride."

"Hey, wait," Sam called out, but Rusty only lifted one hand in a half-hearted wave and started walking into the field without looking back. His purple shoes slipped between the tufts of grass, not quite touching it but not quite passing through it either.

Then he was gone, fading into the sunlight.

Sam looked at the empty field for a long moment before turning back to the car.

Dean started the car as he climbed in. "That's it?"

There might have been something out there, once. The tall grass could be hiding the foundation of a ruined barn, the cellar of a long-vanished home, an unmarked grave.

The inside of the car felt stuffy and confining. Sam rolled the window down, rested his elbow on the door. "That's it."

"He just –"

"Let's go," Sam said.

The wind shifted, and for a moment Sam thought he heard a drift of laughter, the jangle of carnival music under the rumble of the engine.


End file.
